She Owl and The Cosmic Heart
Moths and Giraffes are pleased to bring you our first music video premiere of the year, taken from She Owl’s third album of the same name, ‘Invisible Heart’. Our review of this intimate and gentle track is accompanied by exclusive commentary from the band on the making of the single and its newly released visuals, shedding more light on its themes and cosmic origins.
She Owl are Demian Endian and Jolanda Moletta. Image Credit: Giorgio Violino.
She Owl are the Italian duo of multi-instrumentalists Jolanda Moletta and Demian Endian. They released their eponymous debut EP in 2013, with their similarly titled debut album following later that same year. ‘Animal Eye’ became the band’s next record in 2015, with a second EP called ‘Drifters’ arriving in 2017.
During the pandemic, the duo kept busy by recording and releasing a series of lockdown live recordings including tracks from their albums such as ‘Mimla’ and ‘Paper Birds’. In 2021, She Owl collaborated with Heligoland and Cocteau Twins’ Robin Guthrie to release the John Martyn cover ‘Please Fall In Love With Me’.
Although we’ve never written about She Owl before, we have previously written about the music and videos of Jolanda Moletta. We covered some of her vocal and visual contributions to her work with GALÁN / VOGT, and later a video premiere for Moletta’s collaboration with Henrik Meierkord and Ambientologist entitled ‘Incanto’.
Prior to the pandemic, She Owl returned to Italy to begin recording their third album. With the assistance of remote recording, contributions from their band spread from California, Sweden and Switzerland, with the album being mixed in London. ‘Invisible Heart’ is the third single from the album, after the releases of ‘Falling Star’ and ‘Still Beauty’. The album’s title track is the closing song on the record, released in January 2023.
“‘Invisible Heart’ appeared like those blades of grass on the balcony on the seventh floor. It's the last song on the album, but it sounds like an advance of our next one. I remember I was in the same room with Jolanda, half-distracted by my coffee, then she started playing these chords and sang ‘We need a little bit of time...’, and it sounded quite as you hear it in its final version. The guitar part came to my fingers all at once and effortlessly as well. Oddly enough, I got excited only a few hours later... It seems this one had to be written this way, no alternative. To my ears, it's the kind of song that sounds familiar from the very first time, my favorite kind.” – Demian Endian
Absent of drums, the piano doubles as the percussive element on ‘Invisible Heart’ – listen closely for the clicking of the keys, the lifting of the sustain pedal. The voice of Jolanda Moletta is yearning, ‘We need a little bit of time to find our home. In an instant, we stumble in time.’ The gentle backing vocals are sparse, but work well in the arrangement with Moletta’s assured piano and Demian Endian’s warm electric guitar playing.
The latter’s performance is so thoughtful, taking in the dynamic of the piece, sometimes grabbing the full focus of the listener, and in other cases hardly vibrating the strings at all, paying attention to the impact of the lyric. Additional atmospheric components are provided by Moletta, the keyboard strings placing this track in an icy cavernous setting in which she breathes out clouds of vapour with each line.
Image Credit: Giorgio Violino.
The music video, which is directed by Jolanda Moletta and Giorgio Violino (who also shot the album artwork) is breathtaking in its simplicity. It very purely demonstrates our need for connection, an especially poignant notion following the isolation felt by many during the pandemic.
The intimacy of ‘Invisible Heart’, from the eye contact of the performers to the studio space it was shot in, heightens the connection between the viewer and the song. Indeed, the eye contact could be deemed uncomfortable as the eyes of Moletta and Endian linger on the viewer, but the glow of the lighting and embrace of the artists say otherwise. Their movements are delicate, inviting the viewer in, even the superimposition of flames is intended to warm, not to ward.
In the video’s final moments, a beating heart bridges the gap between the separate figures of Jolanda Moletta and Demian Endian. A metaphor perhaps for the singular and unified sound of She Owl on both the song and album of ‘Invisible Heart’. On a closing thought, Jolanda muses on the subject of the heart and connection on a greater level:
"It's a cosmic lullaby about the relationship between time and desire: can we feel the passing of time if we have no desires at all? Also, a deeper meaning of 'desire' could be 'to be away from the stars'. What do we hold onto, what is it that keeps us alive and makes us feel at home even under a starless sky? My answer is 'the heart'. Heartbeats can be left unheard almost all day, and yet, undetected, often underrated, they create our rhythm of life, a way to measure our perceptions, and our dreams. Together with Demian, we once imagined the universe as one giant, immense Being with an invisible heart, because it is so big that it may contain the galaxy we live in. Sometimes things seem invisible only because they're huge, way bigger than our comprehension." – Jolanda Moletta
Image Credit: Giorgio Violino.
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Purchase a copy of She Owl’s ‘Invisible Heart’ on CD, vinyl and download via their Bandcamp page. Subscribe for a discount on merchandise plus a selection of back catalogue releases.
Follow She Owl on Facebook and Twitter @sheowlmusic, and on Instagram @she_owl_music.
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